Punishment Fit The Crime
by StarKid McFly
Summary: James has been suspended from Hogwarts for doing something that Ginny isn't sure how to deal with. One-shot, just family fluff.


**Hiya! One-shot that has nothing really to do with anything. In my head where Scorpius and Lily get together in the very far future this happened somewhere in James, Albus and Scorpius's school days. Lily I think has just joined Hogwarts in my head. So, that's why she's not in it. Also, another thing. I know after a hard night's Harry Potter Wiki-ing that James S Potter's hair is supposed to be brown, but for the purpose of this one-shot, he's as ginger as his marmee. :D**

**Disclaimer: Unfortunately, however delusional I may become, I will never believe Harry Potter is mine. It all belongs to the wonderful JK :D**

**Rocky**

**xxx**

"I HATE YOU!"

"I hate you too," snapped Ginny in reply to her scowling teenage boy. "Now don't change the subject."

"Ugh!" protested James, rolling his eyes with a melodramatic throw of the shoulders. "You don't _understand_ me!"

"I_ understand_ the situation perfectly clearly, young man," Ginny told him, "and you would do well to shut up and listen to what I'm going to do about it."

"I haven't done anything _wrong_!" James yelled at his mother, who kept her contemptuous look. "All I did was stick up for my little brother! Wouldn't _you_ stick up for _yours_?"

"Do _not_ use reverse psychology against me, James Sirius Potter!" Ginny shouted crossly. "This doesn't make your actions acceptable!"

"_Wouldn't_ you stick up for yours?" repeated James in a testing manner, raising an eyebrow.

"You left a third year _bleeding_ in the corridor!" Ginny bellowed.

"Wouldn't _you_ stick up for _your_ brother?"James asked again, his voice growing more and more furious.

"Of course I would, James!" Ginny shouted, exasperated. "With words, or possibly a minor hex, not A FULLY FLEDGED CURSE YOU HEARD FROM SOME DEATH EATER CHILD!"

"Oh, well _now_ that's all clear," laughed James wryly, glaring at his mother. "It's a fucking double standard with you, isn't it?"

"I've said it before, and I'll say it again," Ginny's voice grew dangerously quiet, "don't even _try_ to use your psychological stunts on me, James. Now, you're going to go to your room, and you're going to stay there until Hogwarts sees fit - until _I_ see fit - to call you back downstairs again."

James looked livid. "Shall I tell you what I want on my gravestone now then, or –"

"_Just_," Ginny said, closing her eyes, fighting to keep calm, "go."

James threw her one last death glare, before storming upstairs to his room. Ginny heard his door slam, then reopen, then slam again, four times as hard as previous.

Admittedly, she hadn't heard the full story. But Ginny didn't want to take the Ron Weasley approach to tackling her children's behaviour. She didn't want James thinking it was acceptable, what he had done; on the contrary, it was completely _un_acceptable. But whereas Ron and George and possibly even Harry would have agreed with James' actions, Ginny refused to neglect her role as a parent and allow such behaviour.

"Oh my God," she whispered quietly, "I sound like Percy."

* * *

The case Harry was following up was long and tedious. Whoever had known that a nineteen year old witch could cover her tracks so easily and still run circles around them, wreaking havoc and chaos wherever she went?

"News just in," Elisheba Crest interrupted his silence. She held a slip of parchment in her hand ready to present to her senior.

"About Cornelia Vane?" Harry asked, straightening in his seat. He could do with a report on the young witch's whereabouts. He put his case notes down and watched Elisheba with absolute attention.

Ron looked up from his desk a few seats away, chewing on his quill as he eavesdropped on the conversation.

"I'm afraid not, sir," Elisheba replied, handing him the parchment with a look of discomfort. Harry scanned it with a confused frown, recognising the crest on the back.

"Hogwarts?" he asked as he began to rip the envelope in his hands. "What do they – oh. Oh, bloody hell."

Ron, placing his quill back on top of his empty sheet of parchment, stood up and moved round to Harry's desk. "What's the matter?" he asked. "Do they need you to do an assembly or something? Aw. Harry the Hogwarts professor-"

"No. Shut up," Harry snapped. He passed Ron the parchment.

"Bloody hell," Ron's eyes widened. "Suspended? We _never_ got suspended."

"Exactly," Harry muttered, frowning at the paper in disbelief.  
"Let me get this straight," Ron supplied as Harry stared blankly at the parchment, "you stole the Philosopher's Stone from a guarded chamber, killed a basilisk whilst wrecking one of the house founder's secret chambers, helped a convict escape from prison, helped commandeer my dad's car, _blew up your aunt_, entered the Triwizard Tournament underage and _still_ won, broke into the _Ministry of Magic_, almost_ killed_ Draco Malfoy and – let's face it – basically murdered You-Know-Who on the school premises, breaking at least two hundred school rules in the process, and the worst you ever got was a ban on Quidditch from Umbridge, which, may I add, you blatantly ignored the very next year. And now, your son has cursed a Slytherin, and not just _any_ Slytherin but Scorpius bloody _Malfoy_, and he's been suspended. Injustice, anyone?"

"Hmm," Harry said, not really listening.

"I forget, it's alright, for you," Ron continued, "because you're Harry Potter. We can forgive you for all that because you have a thunderstorm on your head." It wasn't bitter, how he said it, more amused. Harry looked up, a grin playing at his lips.

"I bet Ginny's on the warpath," he said, folding up the parchment and stowing it in his robes.

"I expect," Ron agreed. "Just... be sweet and agree with everything she says. It works."

"In many ways, she's worse than Hermione," Harry stated. Ron shivered.

"At least we know Hugo and Rose'll never mess around if they value their lives," he muttered.

"You'd think James would know better really," agreed Harry, looking up at Ron for the first time. "Still want to come for dinner?"

"I'll ask Hermione to reschedule, I think," Ron chuckled.

"Don't you dare," Harry said darkly. "I need you there for moral support."

* * *

"What the _hell_ are you doing?"

James looked up and turned to the doorway to see his mother standing there, her jaw dropped. "Painting my room." He waved the paintbrush in his hand at her to prove a point, splatters of crimson flicking off of it. "I thought it would look better if it matched my hair."

Ginny glared at him. "You're already grounded until your eighty-four. Don't make this any worse for yourself."

He raised his eyebrows. "So I will see daylight again then?" he said jovially. Ginny hid the fact that she was rolling her eyes by putting a hand over them.

"Stop being clever with me." She looked up at him. He was still brandishing the paintbrush as if it was a weapon, though he had stopped piling scarlet onto the walls. "James, put the brush down."

He looked as if he was about to argue with her, then decided against it and let it drop into the rolling pad on his desk, the paint splattering onto other objects in the room with a likeness of blood.

"I just want to know why, James," Ginny said in a voice that suggested that this was tedious work she would like to have over.

"Why what?" James asked innocently. "Why was the universe made? Why do fish live in the sea? Why does McGonagall transform into a cat? I don't have all the answers, Mum."

"You know perfectly well which question I mean."

"Because he was being belittling," snapped James angrily, kicking his desk. "He was being horrible to Albus and I wanted him to shut his trap."

"So you cursed him?"

"You didn't hear the vile things he was saying, Mum," James said in a dangerous voice. "Hugo, for Christ's sake, _Hugo_ almost cursed him. I just got there first."

"Well, I'm glad you at least beat him to it," admitted Ginny. "Hermione would have him hung, drawn and quartered by now."

"Well, Auntie Herm's always been on the savage side," grinned James, causing Ginny to laugh in agreement.

"I shouldn't be making jokes with you," Ginny said calmly. "I should be very angry."

"But I'm just so charming you can't resist," smiled James. Ginny couldn't suppress her laugh.

"I'm sorry if I come across a bit harsh," she apologised, as James came round to sit next to her.

"Uncle Percy-ish, you mean." James smiled coyly.

"Well, yes," Ginny sighed, putting her arm around her oldest son. "But all I want is for you to know it's wrong to just curse someone, no matter what they've said or done. Two wrongs don't make a right, you know, Jim."

"I know, Mum," James sighed. "You don't have to labour on. Dad's given me this lecture a thousand times. I've heard the Pensieve story; he's always on about it. I think it's his lifetime moral."

"Well, obviously it hasn't sunk in, has it?" Ginny snapped, looking at her son with distaste.

"Ah, but this is different, Mummy," said James with a small smile. "Grandad and Sirius were naughty schoolboys, and Snape for once hadn't provoked them into that. I, on the other hand, was defending my little brother. Sirius and Grandad never got punished for that. I, on the other hand, am."

"Well, don't be rude about it, James, and you might see daylight again," Ginny said calmly.

"Are you being serious?"

"You're right," Ginny shrugged, looking away from him so that she could avoid his triumphant smirk. "I would have cursed the bastard too."

"Thank you!" James called out in triumph. Ginny raised a hand.

"That doesn't make it acceptable, James," she said, looking down into his hazel eyes. "But Hogwarts have made that clear. You're not to leave the house until the suspension is over and you'll have to stay at Hogwarts next Hogsmeade weekend."

James looked appalled by this.

"I also expect you to write an apology to the Malfoy kid," Ginny continued, and James tried to protest, but she just gelled over the top of him. "However, when I say this, I do not expect you to grovel. And I don't mind if you point out that provocations often lead to this kind of... accident. But try not to be too rude." She winked at him coyly.

James raised his eyebrows. "This is a very well thought out punishment for someone so angry," he commented. "Did Nan set this for you once or something?"

Ginny, trying to hide her rumbled expression, simply said, "Oh... something Ron did once..."

James looked slightly disbelieving. "Well, thanks, anyway." He stood up and reached for the paintbrush again, sweeping it up into his hand.

"You're welcome," she said, turning to watch him. Her eyebrows pinched together. "What the hell are you doing, James Sirius?"

"Well." James's face split into a devious smile. "I can't just leave my room half red, can I? It clashes awfully with the wallpaper."


End file.
